


Just One Word

by ihatepeas



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Poetry, Romance, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihatepeas/pseuds/ihatepeas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 10 Olicity one-word prompts. #1--Poem. Will add to this as inspiration strikes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Poem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has a strange coping skill.

**More Alive Than You've Ever Been**

It happens by accident. Up to that point, Felicity has managed to keep it to herself. A girl has to have _some_ secrets. And it’s a silly one, kind of embarrassing. She can’t imagine how she’d ever explain it, not so that anyone else could understand. It was her weird little quirk. It was _hers_.

She only ever does it when she’s so nervous or scared that nothing can stop her rambling. Not deep breaths, not counting backward, not anything. But it finally happens one night. She’s sneaking around the server room at Merlyn Global after swinging across an elevator shaft with Oliver like Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia . . . without the awkward brother/sister thing.

Felicity is alone in the server room, and her hands are shaking so badly that she can’t plug the cord into her tablet. She feels like throwing up, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before she’s discovered. And though her lips are silent, her brain is in overdrive, and then . . .

It appears. In her mind’s eye, copied onto a sheet of notebook paper in blue ink, because that’s what she did in high school before she started memorizing. Out loud, she reads the words written in her mind.

_I am not yours, not lost in you,_   
_Not lost, although I long to be_   
_Lost as a candle lit at noon,_   
_Lost as a snowflake in the sea._

Diggle is speaking to her on comms, and then Oliver, but their voices are far away, and she pushes them even farther from her thoughts.

_You love me, and I find you still_   
_A spirit beautiful and bright,_   
_Yet I am I, who long to be_   
_Lost as a light is lost in light._

One of them draws in a sharp breath—she can’t tell who. She doesn’t blame them. It’s Sara Teasdale, and it’s the kind of beautiful that hurts your eyes.

Her heartbeat is less frantic now, and the cord goes into her tablet easily, but she feels like she should finish the poem for Oliver and Diggle.

_Oh plunge me deep in love—put out_   
_My senses, leave me deaf and blind,_   
_Swept by the tempest of your love,_   
_A taper in a rushing wind._

Then her hack into the Merlyn Global mainframe is successful, and they’re off and running, trying to prevent the Undertaking. Nobody mentions Felicity’s strange interlude, and in the ensuing chaos, she forgets.

The second time it happens, Oliver is unconscious. Or so she thinks. She is standing by his side at the med table, holding his still-gloved hand. Dig has gone to retrieve Barry from the train station, and Felicity, afraid that Oliver is dying before her eyes, begins to recite one of the longest poems she knows. Without realizing it, she traces his features with a slender finger as she speaks.

_It begins, as most things do, with a prelude—_   
_an overture, an introduction before the waterfall_   
_of words cascades from our lips. Your mouth_   
_slips and curves past talk of key lime_   
_pie and the entombed ruins of Pompeii._   
_Your face is a study of light and shadow, a chiaroscuro._

Dig returns with Barry slung over his shoulder. Felicity continues in a barely audible whisper as they monitor Oliver’s condition and wait for Barry to wake up.

_With your fingertip as brush, you paint my mouth,_   
_delineating shade and light. Make me a Caravaggian chiaroscuro._   
_The hand that plucked a ripe lime_   
_from its tree now conducts a soft prelude,_   
_opening notes before the splash of a waterfall,_   
_the cascade of earthly fire beneath Pompeii._

When Oliver starts hallucinating, she sees another stanza in her mind and utters it like a prayer, even as he writhes and groans.

_You do not take my hand. Instead, you press a slice of lime_   
_into it, a gift of refreshment to cool the fires of Pompeii._   
_Your austere face, in this cathedral of stars, strikes the prelude_   
_to a service that cannot speak to me. Your mouth_   
_will not say what I want to hear. The chiaroscuro_   
_of your lips casts no waterfall._

Barry asks her what she’s doing, and she has no choice but to explain. Felicity tells him it’s a trick she taught herself a long time ago. When she is very, very scared, and her mouth won’t shut up, and her brain won’t shut up, she recites love poems. When Barry asks why love poems, she shrugs. She was fifteen—she still thought _Romeo and Juliet_ was so romantic. Reciting love poems just made sense.

Later, after Oliver returns from defeating Cyrus Gold and saving Roy, after the body-slamming hug she can’t stop replaying in her mind, Oliver asks her what her favorite part of the poem is. She responds without a second thought.

_Come closer, entwine your fingers in the waterfall_   
_of my hair. Cup my face in your hands like a lime,_   
_casting shadows on my cheeks, a delicate chiaroscuro._   
_Discover me. Stumble upon me like the ruins of Pompeii_   
_and wipe away the ash that seals my mouth._   
_This is your moment, your prelude._

As soon as the last word leaves her lips, Felicity realizes she has basically just asked him to kiss her senseless. Her face is an inferno. She has to be blushing from head to toe. Oliver just tilts his head and smiles, the way he does when she is rambling, and then walks away. Not until her head hits the pillow that night does it occur to her that he had been unconscious before, that he shouldn’t have known about that poem at all.

The third time it happens, she is barely awake, in that post-surgery fog before the anesthesia completely wears off. Her head feels heavy, and her whole right side is throbbing, but it doesn’t really hurt. Not yet. This time it isn’t her voice, but his, soft and tender, a tone that he seems to only use with her.

 _I promise to make you more alive than you’ve ever been._  
. _. . For the first time, you’ll note gravity’s prick_  
 _like a thorn in your heel,_  
 _and your shoulder blades will hurt from the imperative of wings._  
 _I promise to make you so alive that_  
 _the fall of dust on furniture will deafen you,_  
 _and you'll feel your eyebrows like two wounds forming_  
 _and your memories will seem to begin_

_with the creation of the world._

Felicity’s eyes flutter open at the familiar words. It was her favorite. If her soul was a poem, it would be that poem. She’d read it in a college lit class and had been indignant when none of her peers had agreed with her that it was a love poem. She loves the poem so much that she painted it in tremulous calligraphy on her bedroom wall, and she realizes that’s the only way Oliver could know her connection to it.

The fourth time, Oliver asks her to repeat herself. He makes it sound casual, like a request to find something he’s misplaced, and again she recites without thinking.

_Come closer_

He does.

_entwine your fingers in the waterfall  
of my hair._

He does.

_Cup my face in your hands like a lime,  
casting shadows on my cheeks, a delicate chiaroscuro._

He does, and her voice falters. They are so close that his breath raises goosebumps on her scalp. So quietly that she can hardly hear him, he asks her to finish the stanza. She clears her throat loud enough to startle them both. Oliver asks again, adding a “please.” So she finishes.

_Discover me._

His forehead touches hers and she sighs.

_Stumble upon me like the ruins of Pompeii  
and wipe away the ash that seals my mouth._

His thumb runs over her lower lip.

_This is your moment, your prelude._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is quite different from anything else of mine. I posted this with fear and trembling, and only after a second, more objective opinion from the lovely Halcyon Impulsion, who gave me the prompt in the first place. I hope you enjoyed it. Poems: "I Am Not Lost" by Sara Teasdale, which appears in its entirety, excerpts from "Kiss" by yours truly, excerpts from "Ordeal" by Nina Cassian, and "Kiss" again by me. I would also like to apologize for the formatting. No matter how many times I change it, AO3 insists on only italicizing the first line of each stanza instead of the entire stanza.


	2. Spark/Phobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity and Oliver both confess something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this for the prompt word "spark," then quickly realized it would work for "phobia" too. I hope y'all enjoy the fluff. It's basically the only productive thing I've done today. :P

**This Immortal Fire**

In the days she’d spent beside Barry’s hospital bed, Felicity passed most of the time imagining how it would feel to be struck by lightning. She’d read up on it extensively and was familiar now with the burns, the brain and heart damage, and a shocking array of weird after-effects.

She clearly remembered her own near-strike experience. In high school, her cross-country team had been caught outdoors by a sudden electrical storm. They cut their practice run short and headed for a nearby public pool. The building was locked, but there was just enough room for them all to huddle under the eaves. Felicity remembered trying to make herself as small as possible, her shoulder blades pressing into the brick wall, the fine blonde hairs on her arms rising in the charged atmosphere.

As nervous as lightning made her, thunder was worse. She’d always hated loud noises—fireworks, a car backfiring, a slamming door—but thunder made her come unglued like nothing else. Logically she knew it was just noise, that it couldn’t hurt, but she hated the way it made her feel, powerless and terrified. Her fear had started in childhood and gotten worse as she got older. Thunder was a fear she grew into instead of out of, and now that she knew more about the damage lighting could do, she dreaded the inevitable thunderstorms that plagued Starling City every summer.

Of course the first storm of the season would start when she was alone at the Foundry. She’d been watching the weather radar all day, but the storm had moved in faster than predicted. Everyone else—Oliver, Dig, Sara, Roy—was out in the field, trying to stop an arms deal that could bring an influx of illegal weapons into the Glades. Felicity was monitoring everything on comms when a loud clap of thunder blasted into her earpiece.

“Wow, that was close,” said Roy with a nervous laugh.

“Dig, was that you who let out that girlish scream?” asked Sara.

“It was me.” Felicity gulped. She was holding the earpiece away from her head and flinching.

“Are you okay, Felicity?” Oliver asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just—the thunder. I don’t like it.” She hooked the Bluetooth back onto her ear. “But don’t worry about me. Carry on with your vigilantism. Go stop crime.”

Minutes later, as the rest of the team closed in on their target with Felicity guiding them, another clap of thunder echoed. It took her a moment to realize it hadn’t come through the comms but was overhead. She glanced at the monitor where she’d pulled up the weather radar. The giant green swirl seemed to have parked over the Glades.

“Oh, _crap_ ,” she breathed.

“What was that?” asked Diggle in her ear.

“Nothing,” Felicity replied. “Keep bearing left, Dig.”

She knew the storm was close because she could hear the thunder over the music from the club above. As soon as the fighting started, there was little Felicity could do besides listen to the punching and groaning and try not to picture her boys, and Roy and Sara, getting horribly injured.

The lights in the Foundry flickered, followed by another clap of thunder, the loudest one yet. Felicity squeaked and slid out of her chair to hide under the desk. She drew up her knees, glad she was wearing pants. She hated this so much, feeling absolutely powerless, her stomach fluttering and her heart pounding.

A crack of thunder sent her scooting backward until her shoulder blades dug into the back of the desk. The lights went out for good, and the thunder just rolled on and on, boom after boom. Felicity squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, reciting random facts to distract herself.

“Cats have thirty-two muscles in each ear,” she mumbled. “Woodrow Wilson was the first president to earn a Ph.D. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.”

When a hand fell on her shoulder, Felicity shrieked, and jumped so violently that she hit her head on the underside of the desk. She risked opening her eyes but kept her ears covered. Her chair had been moved back from the desk, and there was a pair of legs blocking her view. Green leather-clad legs. Belatedly she realized the lights were back on.

“Oliver?” Her hands dropped from her ears.

“Felicity?” He knelt down. “Are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Not hurt. Just really embarrassed.” She put her head down on her knees.

“Hey.”

She normally loved when Oliver said that to her. It was always a precursor to him saying something sweet. But when he said it now, she knew, though she was staring down at her lap, that he was tilting his head adorably and looking all concerned, and any moment now he would touch her. Lay a hand on her shoulder, cup her elbow. Something. And as soon as he did, she knew she’d fly apart and start bawling. She was that on edge.

Tears sprung to Felicity’s eyes, but he took her hands and drew her out from beneath the desk, bringing her to her feet in one swift move. His arms wrapped around her as he pulled her close. So close that the zipper of his jacket was poking her nose.

“The storm?” he asked.

She nodded. “I said I didn’t like thunder, but . . . I kind of hate it.”

The storm was moving on, the thunder rumbling softly in the distance.

His breath tickled her ear. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Yes, I do,” Felicity said. “I was hiding. Cowering. And you’re all . . . badass. All of you.”

“You feel how you feel,” Oliver replied. “There’s no shame in that.”

“Speak for yourself,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Everyone’s afraid of something.”

“Oh yeah?” She looked up at him. “What are you afraid of, Oliver Queen?”

He smiled. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“I promise. I can keep a secret.”

Oliver’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Horses.”

“Wait, what?” She drew back so she could look into his eyes. There was a little spark there, but she could tell he was sincere.

“And elephants. Possibly dinosaurs, but I’ve never met one.” He gave her a little squeeze and then held her at arm’s length. “I don’t trust any animal bigger than me.”

Oliver let go of her and took off his quiver. He walked over to the table and laid it down. Felicity followed him, skipping a little, her fear forgotten.

“So . . . blue whale?” she asked.

“I suppose, in theory. They’re enormous.” He unzipped his jacket and shrugged out of the sleeves.

“Hmmm . . . woolly mammoth?” Felicity asked.

“I guess.”

“Sasquatch? No, wait, the Loch Ness monster!”

“Big animals, Felicity, not mythical creatures.” He headed for the stairs, and she skipped after him.

“But mythical creatures are just big animals whose existences haven’t been proven,” she said.

Felicity knew he was headed to the bathroom upstairs, and following him would be weird and creepy. She grabbed his hand. He stopped and turned to face her.

“Oliver . . . thank you.” She smiled.

He squeezed her hand. “Always.”


	3. Spelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity's phone's auto-correct puts its foot in its mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most fun I have EVER had writing. Bar none. Much thanks to Halcyon Impulsion, who first suggested the idea of an overenthusiastic auto-correct. And also damnyouautocorrect.com, for giving me a few ideas and making me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe.

**Spelling—Five Times Felicity’s Auto-correct Puts Its Foot in Its Mouth**

**1.**

O: Mtg. w/ Finance dept—1:30 or 2:30?

F: Taco.

O: What?

F: Taco! Am I spelling it wrong?

F: Stupid talk-to-text. Mating’s at 2:00.

O: Oh, really.

F: Damn! Meeting! Meeting’s at 2:00.

F: This is an office, not a zoo. There will be no meeting.

O: But you just said—

F: MATING!

F: Stop laughing at me.

O: Felicity, put down the stapler.

O: If you break your phone, you’ll lose all the tracking signals.

O: That’s my girl.

F: I date you.

F: Hate! WTH??

O: Next time I’ll just use the intercom.

 

**2.**

O: You told me to remind you to tell me . . . something.

O: This is me reminding you.

F: But you don’t even remember what it was!

F: Good thing I do.

F: I meant to tell you I’m taking off a little early tomorrow night.

O: Why?

F: I have to pick up the steam cleaner I rented from the hardware store before it closes.

F: My carpet is gross. Rental. I don’t think I’ve shampooed it since loving me.

O: What??

F: Moving in. OMG, what is wrong with this damn phone?

O: Don’t break it.

F: Why doesn’t this ever happen to boob?

F: YOU! What the hell? How does it even get “boob” from “you”?

F: This phone. It dates me.

F: DAMN.

 

**3.**

F: DID YOU TOUCH MY SERVERS? MY GLORIOUS, PERFECT SERVERS?

O: No need to shout.

F: The scan I was in the middle of. The scan that was running for TWO DAYS.

F: It stopped.

O: I guess it didn’t find anything.

F: It stopped in the middle.

F: Something—or SOMEONE who happens to be a billionaire with questionable computer skills—

O: No name-calling.

F: What did you touch, Oliver?

O: Maybe if you tried turning it off and then turning it back on—

F: Are you trying to be funny, or do you think you’re eloping?

O: Well, I hadn’t planned on it. Thea would be disappointed if I didn’t invite her to my wedding.

F: OMG. This phone. I meant HELPING.

F: Seriously, Oliver, what did you touch? Which butt? Which combination of butts?

O: I don’t touch anyone’s butt without an express invitation.

O: Felicity. Put your shoe down. DO NOT break your phone.

 

**4.**

D: I’m outside. Is it safe to come in?

F: What do you mean?

D: You know what I mean. Is the Cold War over?

F: What, me and Oliver? The shouty, grrr-y thing yesterday?

F: He finally saw it my way. We made love.

D: Overshare. And also, are you CRAZY?

F: OMG. MADE UP. We made up. In a normal way, not in a sexy way.

F: I swear my phone does this on purpose.

F: If this happens ONE MORE TIME, I will throw this phone as hard as I can. At someone’s head.

D: Mine? Or Oliver’s?

F: Depends on who’s laughing the hardest.

D: *ducking*

 

**5.**

F: So I’m planning a birthday party for John. Nothing big.

F: You in?

O: Who’s coming?

F: The usual suspects—Digglemeister, Digglemeister’s hot ex, His Majesty Sir Harper, Oliver’s hot ex—the blonde one . . .

O: What the hell?

F: Wait. What?

F: Digglemeister.

F: Digglemeister. Digglemeister. Digglemeister’s hot ex.

F: STOP. LAUGHING.

F: Oliver’s hot ex—the blonde one

F: His Majesty Sir Harper. His Majesty Sir Harper.

F: HIS MAJESTY SIR HARPER! His Majesty Sir Harper handed me my phone earlier. He must have been messing with it. He changed all the names, the little Felicity-do-you-kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth.

F: I love you, will you shoot him with an arrow?

F: OH. MY. GOD. I will kill him myself.

O: Um.

F: I love you. I love you. DAMN!

O: What are you trying to say?

F: I’m trying to say I love you.

O: Felicity. Put down the hammer. Why do you even have a hammer in your desk?

F: I love you.

O: PUT THE HAMMER DOWN.

\--------


	4. Currency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity makes a deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This totally got away from me and only has a little Olicity in it (but it's good Olicity). I honestly don't know what happened. :P

**Currency—Take Your Daughter to Work Day**

 

When Felicity came back from the seventeenth-floor vending machines with the cold can of Dr. Pepper she’d been craving, she found her chair already occupied. A young girl with a halo of frizzy black hair sat at her desk, swiveling from side to side.

“May I help you?” Felicity asked, pushing her glasses up on her nose.

The girl pushed against the desk to spin the chair violently. “Are you Necessity?”

“Am I what?” She was getting dizzy watching the girl spin.

“Necessity. That’s a weird name. Is it yours?”

“Nope. My name is Felicity.”

The girl wrinkled her nose. “That’s weird too,” she said. “What does it mean?”

“Happiness,” said Felicity.

“Hmmm . . .” The girl stuck out her foot to stop spinning. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a baby.”

“Tell me about it. What’s your name?”

“Kiesla,” said the girl.

Felicity set her Dr. Pepper on the desk. “And that’s not a weird name to you?”

Kiesla shrugged. “It’s just a name. My mom made it up. Names that are other words are weird, like Charity or Honor or Courage.”

Felicity smiled. “Who have you met who’s named Courage?”

“No one yet, but there was a boy in my kindergarten class named Majesty.” She eyed the soda. “Where’d you get that?”

“Vending machine, two floors down.” Felicity opened the can and took a long sip. “So are you bucking for my job or what?”

Kiesla spun the chair again. “I don’t know. What’s your job?”

“Executive assistant to the CEO,” said Felicity. “My boss would be lost without me, so you’d have some pretty big shoes to fill.”

“Your boss is Oliver Queen, right?” Kiesla asked. “The desert island guy?”

Felicity nodded, glancing through the glass walls into Oliver’s office. He was focused on the man and two women sitting across from him. They were from Finance and Marketing, two parts of the business that bored Felicity to death.

“My big sister says he’s hot.”

Felicity choked, spitting Dr. Pepper on the edge of her desk and the front of her red top. She blotted the damp spots with her sleeve. “And—and what do you think?” she asked. It was a dumb thing to say, but half the time she had no control over what came out of her mouth anyway.

Kiesla arched a black eyebrow. “I’m ten. I think salsa is hot.” She jumped up and gestured toward Felicity’s chair. “You can have your spot back.”

Felicity took her seat and assessed the girl standing next to her. She was wearing a bold ensemble: a blue tutu-like skirt over red-and-white-striped leggings, and her sweatshirt was pink with a rainbow-maned unicorn on it. She stumbled, leaning on the desk.

“Are you okay?” asked Felicity.

Kiesla’s face paled. “Dizzy. I think I spun too much.” Without preamble, she turned and threw up into the waste basket next to the desk.

Swallowing against her own gag reflex, Felicity pulled Kiesla’s hair back from her face and rubbed her back while the girl retched. When she straightened up, Felicity handed her a tissue.

Kiesla wiped her mouth. “Okay, so maybe spinning was a bad idea. I already threw up once today.”

“You did?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Kiesla admitted. “I threw up during science, so my dad had to pick me up from school.”

“Yeah, I think spinning was a pretty bad idea,” Felicity said. “Is that your dad in there?” She nodded toward the group in Oliver’s office.

Kiesla nodded, swaying on her feet.

Felicity got up and urged Kiesla to sit in her chair again. There was nowhere in her office for guests to sit. Oliver didn’t like people lingering, and Felicity hated to have anyone looking over her shoulder as she worked. She got enough of that at her night job.

“I should get your dad,” she said.

“No, don’t,” Kiesla said weakly. She was doing her best to curl up into a ball on the chair. “He already feels bad for having to bring me here. It’s a really important meeting. He stayed up all night to study his notes.”

“Kiesla, you’re sick. I’m sure your dad would want to take you home.”

She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. She squinted at Felicity. “Let’s make a trade.”

“A trade?” Felicity asked.

Kiesla rolled her eyes. “You do something for me—don’t get my dad—and I do something for you. What do you want me to do?”

“That’s easy,” said Felicity. “I want you to sit very still and try not to throw up.”

“Well, duh, I’m already doing that. Think of something else.” The young girl sat up. “And it better not be making paperclip chains. That’s what my dad has me do when I’m hanging out in his office. He acts like it’s super important for him to have all his paperclips in one long chain.”

Felicity considered for a moment what a huge pain it would be if she reached for a single paperclip and pulled out a whole chain. What task could she give Kiesla to keep her busy until the meeting was over?

She shoved her tablet across the desk toward the girl. “Do you play Candy Crush?”

Kiesla rolled her eyes again, as if to say, _Who doesn’t?_ Felicity thought kids weren’t supposed to get into the eye-rolling thing until they were teenagers.

“I’m stuck,” said Felicity. “If you do whatever you can to get me off this level, I promise I won’t pull your dad from the meeting.”

“Deal,” said Kiesla, pulling the tablet closer.

“I need my chair, though,” Felicity pointed out. She glanced around, her gaze landing on the tall potted plant sitting on a low table near the windows. She set the planter on the floor. “You can sit here.”

Kiesla hopped up on the table and sat cross-legged, resting Felicity’s tablet on her lap. “What level are you on?” she asked.

“One eighty-five,” Felicity replied, settling in front of her computer. She entered the password to close out her screensaver. It was that dumb Windows star field. When she was in I.T., she had a really cute Hermione Granger screensaver, but Harry Potter characters weren’t professional enough for executive assistants. Or so Isabel Rochev had informed her one day when Felicity caught her snooping.

“Pretty impressive,” Kiesla declared. “My sister says she knows someone who’s on 416 or something like that, but I think they’re lying.”

“It’s possible.” Felicity brought up Oliver’s schedule in one window and started a quick search on Kiesla’s father in another, just to satisfy her curiosity. “More than likely they cheated.”

“How can you cheat at Candy Crush?” Kiesla asked.

“Someone who really knew what they were doing could hack the game and change the code,” Felicity said.

“Why don’t you just do that?”

Felicity sighed as she looked at Oliver’s schedule. The meeting was set to last another hour. She wondered if she should move the trash can closer to Kiesla. Or maybe not, since it was starting to smell. Her stomach rolled, and she reached for her Dr. Pepper.

“Cheating takes all the fun out of it,” she said to the girl after taking a drink. “It’s not very satisfying to just change things so it’s easier to win.”

“And yet you’re letting me play through the level for you.” Kiesla skewered her with a look she’d seen before on Roy’s face. This girl would be a handful in a few years.

“It’s not technically cheating,” Felicity said. “And it’s that or making paperclip chains. Either one is a weird currency.”

Kiesla tapped on the tablet. “What’s all this stuff about the Arrow?” she asked. “Are you an Arrow fangirl like my sister is?”

Felicity managed to swallow this time instead of spitting out her drink. “There are Arrow fangirls?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said Kiesla. “My sister and her friends. They wear green a lot and make googly eyes over that stupid police sketch. It’s so dumb—you can’t even see his face in that, just his hood and his chin. What’s so great about his chin?”

“He does have a really excellent jaw line,” Felicity murmured.

Somewhere a throat cleared. The sound—was it coming from her desk? Felicity checked her computer, but she always kept the speaker volume turned low. Was Kiesla playing a video on the tablet? No, she was still going on about her sister fangirling over the Arrow. Over _Oliver_.

“Felicity, could you step in here a moment?” It was Oliver’s voice, coming from the intercom. The intercom he didn’t even know how to work. He mostly just texted her if he needed something and couldn’t catch her eye through the glass walls.

“Coming, Mr. Queen.” She hit the talk button to turn off the intercom, but the light stayed on. She jabbed it a few more times, but nothing happened. “Oh well. Kiesla, I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”

The girl glanced up from the tablet and rolled her eyes. It had gone from cute to annoying, which was familiar territory, at least.

Felicity entered Oliver’s office and stayed close to the door. “What can I do for you, Mr. Queen?”

“The intercom,” he said, waving toward the phone on his desk. “I’m not sure how it got turned on, but it’s . . . stuck. It won’t turn off.”

She felt the heat of a blush creeping up her neck. To cover, she stepped around his desk and leaned over the phone. She stared at it intently and jabbed a button or two. “So you heard all of that?”

“Mmhmm.”

Felicity turned her attention to the phone in earnest now. No matter how many times she hit the talk button, the light would not go off. How long had it been on? How much had Oliver heard today? Did he hear when she was singing along with Imagine Dragons over her lunch break? (She could never play “Radioactive” without doing that gasp and exhale.) Did he hear when she totally sassed him behind his back after he’d asked her to make dinner reservations for him and Thea? Not to mention the whole conversation with Kiesla. Arrow fangirls. She shook her head.

“How long?” she dared to ask.

“A while,” was all he would say, but when she glanced over at him, he was doing that head-tilting thing and the corners of his mouth tugged upward.

The intercom still wouldn’t turn off. Panicking now as she thought of everything she’d said to herself or to Diggle that morning, Felicity just started punching random buttons. She looked up. Oliver was smiling now, and the women he’d been meeting with were looking at her with raised eyebrows. Kiesla’s father only stared down at his notes.

“It’s off now,” she said, pointing at the light.

“Thank you, Miss Smoak,” Oliver said as she stepped away from his desk. Then, in a murmur so low she almost missed it, “I really do have an excellent jaw line.”

She stumbled as she headed toward the door. Back in her own office, she checked the phone to see if the intercom light was off there too. It was. She could feel Kiesla’s eyes on her and looked up. The girl had commandeered her Dr. Pepper.

“He likes you,” Kiesla said. “He stared at your butt the whole time you were leaning over his desk.”

Felicity’s face was on fire. She felt as if she needed to make another visit to the break room and just stick her whole head in the freezer.

“But he has some stiff competition, because it’s pretty obvious you’re into the Arrow too.” Kiesla waved the tablet around.

More throat-clearing. Felicity stared at the phone.

“Felicity, the light is off,” Oliver’s voice said through the speaker, “but the intercom is still on somehow.”

In desperation, she picked up the receiver and whacked it against the base a few times. “Can you hear me now?” she asked, glancing up. Oliver shook his head. She looked at the cracked panel on the phone and sighed. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”


	5. Path--Turn Right and Change the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity is cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday, thatmasquedgirl! For her birthday one-shot, she suggested I tackle the huddling-for-warmth trope. And then this happened. Things kind of got carried away--I think Felicity would agree. :P And a quick thank-you to all the new followers from the last week or so!

**Path—Turn Right and Change the World**

 

Felicity had never driven to the Queen mansion before, and that was the problem. Oliver, drugged up on painkillers for his broken ribs, was snoring in the passenger seat. She had declared she’d drive him home since Diggle’s arm was in a sling, which would hinder his steering ability. But she hadn’t counted on the snow.

As she drove farther away from the city, the snow came down harder and the wind increased. Her grip on the wheel tightened. Her turn was coming up, but Oliver stirred. She glanced over at him. He took a deep breath and then relaxed. Felicity turned at the next exit, though she couldn’t see the sign in these near-whiteout conditions.

After about fifteen minutes, Felicity wondered why they hadn’t come across the mansion yet. When ten more minutes had passed and she could barely see the lane markings on the road, she admitted to herself that she was lost. There was a GPS app on her phone, but it had slipped from her pocket when she was helping Oliver into the car. She was pretty sure the phone was under his seat.

Felicity pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. She drew her purple coat tighter around her shoulders and opened the door. She had to push against the force of the wind to open enough that she could get out of the car. Immediately she was being pelted in the face by wind-driven snow. Felicity slammed her door shut and ran around to the other side of the car.

She yanked open the passenger side door and crouched down, shielding herself from the elements between the door and the frame of the car. She reached in and blindly groped on the floor for her phone, but Oliver’s long legs folded up into the little front seat were totally in her way. When a large hand dropped onto her shoulder, she screamed.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing?” Oliver asked, his voice rough and sluggish.

“Looking for my phone,” she muttered, reaching under the seat as far as her arm would go. Her fingers brushed against the edge of the phone. She turned to the side to give herself a couple more inches of reach.

“Aha!” She popped up, triumphant, phone in hand, and bonked heads with Oliver. Hard. She rocked back on her heels, but Oliver grabbed her arm before she could fall on her butt or tumble into the ditch. He winced at the twisting motion, and she quickly shook off his hand and stood up.

“Arms and legs in!” she commanded. Oliver complied, and she closed his door. Wind slammed into her face, and snow swirled before her eyes. She ran around the car and got back into the driver’s seat.

“Is it snowing?” Oliver asked.

Felicity glared at him. “Yes, Oliver, it’s snowing. Blizzarding, actually, and I took a wrong turn somewhere.”

He looked out the window. “It’s almost a whiteout. Why didn’t you turn around?”

She pierced him with another withering look. “It didn’t start snowing until I was already past the halfway point. Turning around wouldn’t have been any better than moving forward.” She turned her attention to her phone, bringing up the GPS app to try and figure out where they were.

Oliver shifted in his seat, and she saw him grimace out of the corner of her eye. “You need to hold still,” she said. “I can’t give you any more oxycodone for at least two more hours.”

“I still can’t believe you force-fed me painkillers,” he muttered darkly.

“Yeah, well, you were being an idiot,” Felicity said, focused on her phone. “It was either shove a pill down your throat, or knock you out and call an ambulance.”

Felicity had coverage, even in this isolated area—she’d hacked her phone to give herself coverage everywhere—but for some reason, the GPS app wasn’t loading. She had no way to know their location.

“Great,” she mumbled.

“What?” Oliver asked.

“We’re lost in a blizzard, and my GPS isn’t working.” Felicity sighed. “I guess I’ll just turn around and try to retrace my steps.” She turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered but wouldn’t turn over. She tried again, pumping the gas pedal. Nothing.

Oliver’s hand closed over hers. “You’ll flood it,” he said.

“I know that.” She released her grip on the key and pulled her hand away from his. “Jessica doesn’t do well in the cold,” she said. “She is a rare and delicate flower.”

“Are you developing a split personality?”

Felicity turned to punch him in the shoulder but stopped herself. Any touch of hers could hurt, with his broken or at least very bruised ribs. “Jessica is my car. And she’s put her foot down. She won’t be going anywhere until the temperature goes up a little bit.”

“How’s your phone’s signal?” Oliver asked. “Does it have enough juice to call Dig?”

“What could he do? He can’t drive with only one good arm.”

“I’m sure he could manage in order to rescue us. Or he could send someone out here.”

Felicity called up her list of contacts. Diggle was number two after Oliver. When he’d gone back to the island last year, she considered deleting his number from her phone because that’s how mad she was at him. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, though she did move him down from the number one spot until he came back. It was only fair.

Dig picked up before the first ring had played through. He said he’d been worried about them driving in the snow and was just about to call them himself.

“Well, we’re kind of stuck,” Felicity said. “You know how Jessica hates the cold. And I’m not really sure where we are.”

“Did you put that emergency kit in the back like I told you to?” Diggle asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. That should keep you taken care of until I can track you down and get there. Jessica has a GPS tracker, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Be nice to my computers. No punching the space bar repeatedly in frustration,” Felicity warned him.

“I think you have me confused with Oliver.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “I would never do such a thing.”

“Dig, I would never confuse you with Oliver.”

When she ended the call, she felt Oliver’s stare. “What?”

“You know what. What was that supposed to mean, you’d never confuse Dig with me?”

“Just . . .” She waved her hand. “That I wouldn’t. You two don’t have  _that_ many similarities, beyond not talking about your feelings. And being incredibly ripped, though Dig’s arms are bigger than yours. Not that there’s anything wrong with  _your_ arms. They’re perfectly respectable, nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I like to think so,” Oliver said. His lips quirked upward. “What did he say? I assume he’s on his way.”

Felicity nodded. “He can track Jessica’s GPS.” She buttoned her coat all the way up to her chin. “I’m going to get out the emergency kit.”

“This car doesn’t have a trunk,” Oliver pointed out. “Just a very tiny back seat.”

“Which you are intimately familiar with, I know.” Felicity slapped her forehead. “Oh, that did not come out right.”

“The point is, you don’t have to go outside to get your kit,” said Oliver. “You shouldn’t go outside. You’ll lose your body heat, and you’ll let out whatever heat is left in here.”

“I know, but I can’t reach the bag from here,” Felicity said. “It’s squashed in behind the back seat.”

“You could climb over the seat.”

She considered that for a moment. But then she pictured herself turning in her seat and crawling over the center console to get into the back. She was wearing a pencil skirt, which hindered her movement somewhat. She would either rip her skirt or end up giving Oliver a free show.

“No, that won’t work,” she said, feeling her face heat with a blush. “I’ll get out. It’ll just be for a second.”

Flustered, she jumped out of the car, slammed her door and threw open the back door. Her eyes lit on the faint brown stain on the seat. She’d never quite been able to get Oliver’s blood out of the upholstery. She stretched her arm behind the seat, feeling for the shopping bag that contained her emergency supplies, but it was just out of reach. She got in the back seat and twisted around in order to grab the bag. It was caught on something, but she yanked anyway, tearing a hole in the side. She had to bump against the back door twice with her hip to get it shut against the wind. That second hit would probably leave a bruise.

Once she was in the front seat with the bag in her lap, Felicity struggled to get her own door to close. The wind was absolutely crazy. Oliver leaned way over, with a pained grunt, and helped her pull. With the door finally shut, she settled back in her seat with a sigh. Oliver was sitting up, breathing shallowly as if every inhale hurt, which it probably did.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I wish I could give you another pill, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine. It’s just—moving hurts. And breathing.”

“If you’re going to keep insisting on not going to the hospital, you really should invest in an X-ray machine.” She started digging through the bag on her lap.

“What good would that do? It would only tell us if my ribs are broken. Either way, there’s nothing to be done besides taping them up, which Diggle already did, and waiting for them to heal.”

“You’re really not good at waiting, though,” Felicity pointed out.

She took an inventory of the contents of her emergency kit, out loud for Oliver’s benefit. Partly to inform him of their supplies, and partly to distract him.

“Flashlight, flares . . . we can use those when Dig gets closer, so he can see us in the snow. There are still three protein bars, but I ate all the beef jerky. Two big bottles of water, my Mickey Mouse rain poncho, matches, batteries. A first-aid kit, but we don’t really need that since Dig took care of you. Pepper spray, which we don’t need either. Unless you can’t keep your hands to yourself.” Her jaw dropped. “Not that you wouldn’t. Or would? Anyway, the pepper spray probably isn’t effective anymore. I bought it four years ago.”

“Is there a blanket?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah, in the bottom,” she said. “Why? Are you cold?”

“You are,” he replied. “Your hands are shaking.”

“That’s because I’m freezing. I did have to run out in the snow twice.”

“You should wrap up in the blanket,” he said. “It could be a while before Dig gets here, and if you can’t start the engine, you can’t run the heater.”

“Oh, poor Jessica,” said Felicity, patting the dashboard.

“Blanket, Felicity.”

She hated the way he said her name sometimes. She loved it too, but the way he did it—it made her want to promise him  _anything_ .

“You don’t have to be so bossy,” she said. “I’ll get the blanket in a second, but you’re the one who’s hurt. I have to take care of you first.”

“I thought I still had two hours to go before another pill.”

“You do, but you should also drink some water and put something on your stomach. I don’t know how you’re not all loopy and weird like I was when I got shot.” She set everything on the floor by her feet and pulled the blanket out of the bag.

“I’m bigger than you are, and Diggle gave you two pills because having a bullet removed from your shoulder and stitched up hurts a whole lot more than a bruised rib or two.”

“It’s more than one or two, and they’re more than bruised, I can tell,” Felicity retorted, holding out the protein bars. “Now stop ordering me around and pick a flavor.”

He smiled then. “Yellow is a good color,” he said, plucking a bar from her hand.

“I’m pretty sure that’s banana-flavored.”

Oliver tossed the bar on the floor with the other items from the kit. “Yellow is a bad color. What else is there?”

“Vanilla. And chocolate crisp. There were some chocolate mint ones, but I ate them ages ago.”

“So you routinely raid your emergency kit for food?” he asked.

“Extreme hunger is an emergency.”

Oliver took the chocolate crisp bar. He unwrapped it with one hand, and Felicity realized that helping her close her door must have hurt him a lot more than he was letting on.

“Water?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Neither of us should leave the car unless we absolutely have to.”

“Why would we—Oh, you mean to pee.”

“Yeah.”

Oliver took a bite of his protein bar and chewed noisily. Or maybe it was just the small confines of the car that made it seem so loud. Either way, it was annoying.

“Felicity Megan Smoak.”

“ _What_ ?” she snapped without thinking. Only her mother ever called her by her full name, and it was always a precursor to a major scolding.

“Pick up that blanket and wrap yourself up,” Oliver demanded. “ _Now_ .”

“Oh my God, Oliver. You sound like my mother. If you give me one more order, I’m going to poke you in your injured ribs.”

“I don’t care what I sound like,” he said. “Wrap up.”

It wasn’t much of a blanket. More like a throw. It  _was_ a throw, now that she thought about it. She’d never really liked it. The synthetic fiber it was made from made it feel kind of slick, and it tended to shed burgundy fuzz everywhere. That was why she’d put it in the emergency kit in the first place.

“That’s not much of a blanket,” said Oliver as he continued munching on his protein bar.

“I realize that now,” Felicity replied. “But I never thought I’d actually need it.”

Felicity unfolded the blanket and draped it over her bare legs, tucking the edges underneath her. She was freezing in spite of her coat, and a skirt wasn’t really blizzard-compatible.

Oliver swallowed a huge bite and then started to unbutton his pea coat with one hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m going to warm you up,” he replied, “but you’ll have to come over here.”

“Oliver, I’m fine. I can just burrow under this blanket until Dig gets here.”

“There’s no way to know how long that will take, and that pathetic excuse for a blanket isn’t doing you any good.”

“Hey! It might be a pathetic excuse for a blanket, but it’s  _my_ pathetic excuse for a blanket.”

Oliver finished unbuttoning his coat and pushed the lapels back to either side of his torso. He was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes, which were full of concern. “Look,” he said, tilting the rear-view mirror toward her. “Your lips are blue.”

Felicity glanced at her reflection. Her bright coral lipstick had mostly worn off, and her lips did indeed have a pretty pronounced blue cast. She almost didn’t notice her chattering teeth anymore, but the sight of her lips was difficult to ignore.

“Come over here,” Oliver said again. “Please.”

She sighed noisily, untucking the blanket. “You have no regard for my personal space and boundaries, do you?”

“Felicity.  _Your lips are blue_ . Survival trumps personal space.”

She sighed again, mostly for his benefit, and considered how to climb over the center console in her skirt.

“Legs first,” he suggested.

“This is weird,” she mumbled as she drew up her knees, edged around the steering wheel, and swung her legs over onto his.

“Now just slide over the rest of the way,” Oliver said.

Felicity’s eyes widened. “But then I’ll be sitting in your lap.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Oliver, I don’t—”

“The alternative is hypothermia,” he said, his breath lifting the loose hairs around her face. “So ask yourself how cold you really are.”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I was pretty cold before we left the Foundry, and now . . . I’m not even really feeling it anymore. I guess—”

His arm slipped around her waist and he moved her the rest of the way onto his lap. She was too stunned to speak or move as he drew her under his coat and wrapped his arms around her. She started shivering, big, full-body tremors. It was as if her numb body had just woken up and realized how cold it really was.

“So, um, how’s life?” she asked brightly.

He smiled against her forehead. “You already know how it is. We spend almost every day together.”

“I am trying to smooth over this awkward situation with idle chatter. Humor me.”

“Idle chatter?”

“That’s what my mom always said to me about my chatter. It was idle. Or banal. She likes words like that. It’s funny how many times she’d tell me, ‘Use your words, Felicity.’ She didn’t mean use even more words—she meant use the right ones.”

Another big shiver caused her to curl into him, instinctively seeking warmth. When she realized what she was doing, she thought about pulling away, but he’d probably just hold her tighter. So she just held very still and mentally told herself over and over to be cool.

“I like your chatter,” said Oliver. “It’s one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“Hmmm, that’s nice,” she mumbled, turning her face toward his chest. She tried to nose her way into his coat, not caring at all anymore how it looked.

“Your mom is wrong, by the way,” Oliver continued. She liked the way his voice rumbled against her ear while he spoke. “It’s not idle or banal. It’s . . .”

“Excessive,” Felicity suggested.

“Entertaining.”

“Occasionally inappropriate. Unintentionally appropriate, I might add.”

“Endearing,” Oliver countered.

“Seriously?” she asked his armpit.

“Seriously.” He sighed. “Wait, are you nuzzling my armpit?”

“No!” she cried, pulling back. “I’m just trying to get warm. Ugh, Dig better hurry up and get here. I’m pretty sure I can’t do anything else to make this more awkward, but it won’t stop me from trying.”

He chuckled, and her breath caught. He had just  _laughed_ . It was a sound she’d never heard, not once, from the day he approached her cubicle in the I.T. department until now. It was kind of beautiful, and now all she wanted was to hear it again. Just once.


	6. Finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity has all the feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a hard place to go to. That's one of the reasons it's so short--it was somewhere I didn't want to stay for very long. It's my take on that spoiler pic for 2x23 that made Tumblr explode with feelings. The title comes from the Doors' song "The End."

**Finale—The End of Our Elaborate Plans—2x23 spec**

Felicity should have been terrified. There was a sword at her throat, and the man wielding it could take her head off her shoulders without expending much effort. She  _was_  afraid—of course she didn't want to die—but if this was her grand finale, she was okay with it. At least she'd go out on her feet.

With the hood down and his mask off, Felicity could see the progression of emotions playing across Oliver's face. Recognition, confusion, anger, fear. He vacillated between anger and fear, anger and fear, in time to her heartbeat, it seemed. It was hard for her to watch and not be able to do anything. Slade was shouting at him, roaring in her ear, and she could feel the cold edge of the blade on her neck.

She couldn't speak to be heard over Slade. She couldn't shake her head or anything. She was afraid any movement might draw Slade's attention from Oliver to her. All Felicity could do was hold Oliver's gaze. The despair in his eyes was almost more than she could take, trapped as she was, but she didn't look away.

"Felicity."

It was all he said, all she needed to hear. Oliver had always been able to pack a world of meaning into something as simple as her name. She had no idea what her expression looked like, so she concentrated on communicating through her stare everything she'd said to him in the clock tower, and everything she hadn't been able to say.

Felicity saw the moment when Oliver got the message. So she smiled at him, closed her eyes, and jammed the syringe with the cure into Slade's thigh.


	7. Measure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Felicity doesn't get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here I go, adding to the glut of post-2x23 fic.

**Measure—Words to Encompass a World**

It was easy. It was natural. It scared him.

Felicity was smart—brilliant. He knew she would catch on immediately, and she did, as soon as he pressed the syringe into her hand. But he hadn’t counted on how it would feel to look into her eyes and put on a show for the cameras.

She hadn’t gotten it at first—he could tell. Her reactions were off, and he was worried Slade wouldn’t buy it. “I love you” was not part of the plan. It just came out, and as the words left his lips, he realized he meant them. They were precious words. For all his fooling around before the island, and his ill-judged relationships since, he’d never thrown those words around. They were  _serious_ words. “I love you” was a promise, yet it had tripped from his tongue as naturally as her name.

Her name. Whenever he struggled to find words, or came up against something he couldn’t bring himself to say, he would pour everything he had into her name.  _Felicity_ . He’d make it a prayer, a plea, a song. A promise.  _I love you_ .

When Slade said her name, Oliver almost wrecked the whole plan right there. From Slade’s mouth, her name was not a promise but a curse.  _You lose, I win. Die alone_ . The fury awoken in him almost blotted out the horror of seeing her with a blade at her throat. But as he began to speak to distract the other man, he swelled with pride. Naked fear battled in her eyes with unwavering trust, and fear lost.

Slade had implied that she was weak. He thought he’d taken her measure, but he had no idea what she was made of, this woman who had called him on his b.s. from the moment they’d met, who knew, when she’d taken the syringe, that she was holding her own life in her hands, and his life, and Sara’s, and Laurel’s, the responsibility of an entire city in her small hands, long fingers, chipped nail polish. Oliver never doubted for a minute that she would save them all.

He’d rarely seen her at a loss for words, but she floundered as they spoke on the beach, most of her sentences incomplete and dangling over the edge of a precipice he was afraid to approach. “I love you” was a promise, and he could offer her nothing but fear, danger, and a shattered soul almost beyond redemption. Almost.

Felicity’s confession that she’d nearly bought it herself squeezed at his heart a little. She had held out hope in her hands for one brief moment before putting it back in her pocket, where it belonged. Hope was a promise too, and she didn’t know, on the beach or at the mansion, that while “Do you understand?” meant  _Do you understand the plan?,_ it also meant  _Do you understand that I love you?_


End file.
